Six steps to finding your true north
Six steps to finding your true north
Here I am again — stuck in another dead-end job that I’m too smart to start and too dumb to leave. I know I have talent and can learn new skills. I ought to be pursuing a career with a future. I don’t know what it’s supposed to be. I’m afraid to commit for fear I’ll make the wrong choice and have no one to blame but myself. I need someone to tell me what to do and give me a money-back guarantee in case they’re wrong. I guess that’s not going to happen.
You’re right. That’s not going to happen because you’re the one who’s accountable: It’s up to you to find a job that takes you in the right direction and to leave a job that doesn’t. No one else has your unique perspective or as much at stake in the outcome. And no one can get quite as lost in the fog or stuck in the muck of competing ideas as you. That’s not to say that others should do your thinking or deciding for you, but they can contribute to your ability to make good choices by combining what they see with what you know, enabling you to organize your mental clutter and clarify what is otherwise obscure. Use your energy, intelligence and intuition, and face front. Take one small step. Then another. Keep moving and choosing. You’ll make good decisions and bad, easy and tough, win-win and no deal. That’s life — a matchup of multiple choice questions and possible answers that hold no guarantees of success, just the promise of unknown consequence and untapped potential. Celebrate the choices that turn out well, forgive yourself for the ones that don’t, and know that whatever the outcome of each, you’ll get to choose again.
Some decisions appear urgent and require an immediate response with limited information. Some are important and require time to aggregate relevant information before responding. And some decisions parade as one or the other, but in all practicality are neither.
Choosing the right career direction is important. It takes time up front and pays off long term. The information and insight you need is scattered about, often hidden in plain sight, sometimes evident to those who know you best. Structure suggests what you need; process points out what’s missing; and method puts it together.
Step 1: Find the answers that are within you. Identify your intrinsic beliefs: Prioritize values that provide you inner satisfaction and inspiration. Step 2: Define tangible rewards: Prioritize those most important to you, such as job titles, benefits and earnings. Step 3: Outline and prioritize your innate strengths and learned skills.
Step 4: Confirm your strength/skill profile by getting feedback from those with whom you have successfully worked.
Step 5: Combine your intangible values and tangible rewards with your validated skills and innate strengths.
Step 6: Craft a career objective that states the where, how and what you want to achieve going forward.
Honest feedback from a variety of sources is essential to this process. The only way you’ll get it is to ask for it. If you want it to be candid, you’ll listen to it. If you want to understand it, you’ll clarify it. If you want to incorporate it, you’ll acknowledge it. Your goal is to learn what you don’t know so the choices you make and directions you take are reality based and future oriented. Remember that whatever choice you make, you get to choose again. If you learn from experience then you won’t repeat mistakes, but you’ll dare to make new ones. Get on board to the destination that for you is true north.
Joyce Richman is a speaker and career coach conducting seminars and workshops throughout the United States, and the author of "Roads, Routes & Ruts: A Guidebook for Career Success." You can reach her at 288-1799 or JERichman@aol.com. Watch Joyce Richman's latest career advice Wednesdays at 6:35 a.m. during "The Good Morning Show" on WFMY News 2 or visit http://www.digtriad.com/business/columnists/career_minute/
